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The summary by fjtorres is both excellent and accurate.
There are indeed two distinct and separate economies. Unsurprisingly, of course, those two separate and distinct economies are themselves competing. The "legacy" publishers behave as if their books are so superior that they are above competition with Indies. Again unsurprisingly in todays big publishing landscape of celebrity memoirs and politicians memoirs and self-help books, this does not seem to be working for them. Their frenzied pursuit of the next mega-seller has resulted in them cutting many of their mid-list authors loose. It's not hard to guess that many of these authors continue writing and go to Indie publishing. Many have been so happy with the move that they have sought reversion of their backlist titles to publish as Indies. The legacy publishing share of total ebook sales are continually declining, and they have lost some genres almost entirely, romance being the foremost example. Articles regularly appear in various publications proclaiming that ebook adoption has stalled and print is enjoying a resurgence. This is usually backed up by data from established industry sources which deal with the Indie market by simply ignoring its existence. More realistic sources such as Author Earnings attempt to cover both markets and show that the overall ebook market continues to grow, with Indie's taking an ever larger share.
The downside to Indie publishing is also its greatest advantage. That is the lack of curation. If anyone can publish and distribute an ebook, there will be some ebooks published which should never have seen the light of day. The good news is that such ebooks are relatively easy to avoid with minimal effort. When considering a new author, read the sample. This will quickly eliminate books with terrible punctuation and grammar and even some which are simply badly written. Reviews can be useful but should be taken with a grain of salt. We all develop our own methods for avoiding really awful books. Even if we do make a mistake, its much better to waste $3.99 than $14.99. I've bought some terrible legacy published books over the years as well, and quite frankly think their curatorship is a drawback rather than an advantage. Others feel differently, which is fine.
Whether you prefer legacy or Indie publishing, or a mixture, enjoy your reading. I still read the odd legacy title but tend to get them from the library given the pricing situation.
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